El Chubbo Grande Fat Ass

Got together with friends and ran. This was supposed to be a low-key event, and I was one of the FNG's, so I didn't feel like it would be kosher for me to invite any of my friends. Fat ass races tend to skirt some regulations, so pardon the lack of written details.

El Chubbo turds.








JT taking a photo of me taking a photo of him. We almost caused a singularity event.






El Stone Grande Del Arthur





The rest of the run was nice - and very runnable, but not so photogenic.
I haven't been doing my long runs. My feet are currently soaking in ice-water. My plantar didn't screw with me today, so I'll take regular sore feet over that old nonsense any time.

Sunset

I shopped last weekend, instead of running. The only outdoors experience I got was a beautiful sunset from Cherry Creek mall.

This weekend is in doubt. Big plans, but I have a cold, so the plans might fizzle.

Rock Canyon Half

I ran the Rock Canyon Half Marathon a couple of years ago. It was lots of fun: near home, quick, simple, fast, cheap, and I could sign up at the last second. Not this year.
I talked to JT, and he was told it was "closed" two weeks before. Other sources said it was closed a week before. Still others didn't report it was closed until a few days before the race.
At the race, an hour before start, one of the club members and race volunteers was surprised to find out registration had closed and that there was no race-day registration.
The RD is a good guy, and this is a great race, but it has always been a small-local event, and this year it kind of exploded into a very big thing. Bigger than expected. So communication and organization in some areas kind of went out the window. Those who got registered were well-organized, and once the race started, it was business as usual: a very good time.
But I did not get registered in time. Dave Black and his son Joe did. Anita F also didn't get registered. This was FUBAR - the plan had been for Dave, Joe, and I to drive down to Colorado Springs to camp on Anita's floor, then all four of us carpooled down to Pueblo Saturday morning. But only half of us ran the official race.



Anita and I ran the whole course starting 40 minutes before everyone else, so we had a roving ring-side seat.



The forecast was for colder, windier, and even some wetness. It was dry and (almost) nice.



I ran the whole course for free, but without the extra oompf from competition, and $40 cheaper.

Daniels Park

Yes, I actually did something last weekend, but I've been too busy to get it posted.

Paul G was training for Across The Years and decided to do a Fri-midnight to Sat sundown run on the high ground from Daniels Park south of Denver. Some people are quiters. Paul doesn't know WHEN to quit!! So I met him after sundown Saturday night and we went several miles. I left him for a bit and did 3-sets-of-3 1/8 mile hill repeats that hurt like bloody hell. Oddly, the last set didn't hurt any more than the 1st.

Somehow, I haven't seen or spent much time with my friends since summer. Tim F is in Afghanistan. Anita F I finally saw again at Rim Rock and I realized I've been remiss. So I spent time with Paul Sat night, and then again Sunday morning (yeah, he was still going). And I'll be car-pooling to Pueblo with Dave B this weekend for the Rock Canyon Half Marathon.

I did hill repeats Saturday night, then intervals Monday night, and track workout Tuesday. Rest and massage tomorrow. DTR run Thursday (I plan to be a slacker).


Monday, coming home from work, a black fox with a white-tipped tail crossed the road in front of me. These are usually teenage Red Foxes that are full-grown, but not fully matured. Very rarely, they retain their black coat through life. I'd never seen a black fox, though, so this was a very cool thing to see. And it was only about 50 feet away.

DTR Thanksgiving Day Run

We were supposed to meet at Noa Noa coffee shop, but I was running late. Then I took the wrong highway west from Golden and ended up on the wrong side of Centennial Cone Park. But it didn't really matter. I met up with the group 20 minutes later.


The wind was raging, and the temps were frigid. Thankful it wasn't -36 like it was in Leadville this morning!


I gave blood on Tuesday, so my legs weren't getting oxygen. I wasn't light-headed. It was as if I had just finished a race two days before. My legs just weren't cooperating. But I still got some decent miles and time-on-feet.






This is where everyone headed back, and I continued for some longer miles.






Mine were the only tracks for much of the way.


I saw two adult bobcats, a hawk that flew out of the grass a dozen feet away, a Rocky Mountain Bluebird flew across the trail in front of me, and whitetail deer tracks - a doe and two fawns. Unusual to see two fawns with one adult. The fawn tracks were so small they must've been the size of a medium dog.


James Peak on the horizon.

In all, 17.2 miles.

Rim Rock 2010 Re-assess

I was pretty hard on myself for taking longer than 4hr to finish the Rim Rock Marathon. No doubt, I'm not exactly in great shape. However, looking at the stats, I still managed to finish 3rd in my division, and 58th out of 174 finishers. That's exactly the 33% mark, with 2/3 of the racers finishing behind.

I stopped "racing" at mile-marker 25, when I looked at my watch and saw 3:53 race-time. In order to reach my goal of a sub-4hr finish, I would have had to run sub-6min pace. I wasn't moving that fast down the steepest decent! So I "jogged" it in, not even caring that Sarah Labrec passed me near the end. I was more than able to re-pass her, but wasn't about to ruin what was apparently a very triumphant photo-op finish for her. I missed my goal and so nothing else really mattered but finishing. No doubt that final jog padded my time by over a minute.
However, compared to the whole pack, and the fact that I've been injured, I compared decently.
If I had not taken my camera, then finishing sub-4hr would have been guaranteed. Check out my special photographer running technique...

There was plenty of that, stopping, running backwards, even backtracking for the right angle a couple of times.
But I still tried hard, and with every stop, that's a bit of rest, and so not every second of stopping was actually a second lost. I was always able to run a tiny bit faster after each photo break.
So even though I'm still not satisfied, I'm not as upset as I was.

Check out this running form video/photo analysis...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hqspH_OTzA
"Bounce" in and of itself is not bad. It's "vertical" bounce which is bad. Cheap elastic energy refers to your springiness. This is good, and leads to reduced injury and increased efficiency. This much is left out of this gait analysis. They do mention "range", but not "spring".
I already have the correct landing angles, and my hands don't cross over, but I'll bet I bounce vertically quite a bit. Last night, I tried to mimic the Ethiopians, not bouncing as I ran. What I found was that in order to avoid vertical bounce, I had to alter the gyrations of my hips. This tired me out very quickly. I also discovered that in order to pull off the type of leg motions with that lack of bounce, I had to move much faster. Since I'm not in great shape, moving that fast, with that running form, killed me in a quarter mile.
On a ragged trail full of rocks and tree roots, much of this falls apart. It is not lost completely, though.
When Adam Feerst first re-taught me to run five years ago, I went through the same ordeal - running the way he taught wore me out in a quarter mile. But the end-result, once the required muscles had been retrained, was that I was much faster and less prone to injury. The knees I ravaged through over-striding were healed and my pace dropped precipitously.
You have to watch closely where in the stride they measure the angles. Many of the Africans will reach forward with their legs, and if you measured when their foot is several inches above the ground, it would look like an over-stride. But it only counts when their foot contacts the ground. As Adam taught, your foot should already be moving backwards when it contacts the ground. The Africans reach forward, and then arc back, contacting with a backwards-moving foot, and the shin is angled back far enough to place the toes directly under the knees.
This video analysis doesn't negate anything that Adam taught me, but it does add a significant morsel, i.e. vertical bounce. I was not able to take all of Adam's clinics, so maybe some of this would have been included? Anyway, very glad to see this, and passing it on to all of you.

Rim Rock Marathon 2010

This was my first running of the marathon version of this race, which used to be the 23.5M Rim Rock Run.
My "training" pretty much ended at the Boulder 100, which was followed by a cold, then epic allergies, blending seamlessly into another cold. Neither cold was very severe at all, but it did keep me from breathing. Add tons of work on the exterior of my house and the only training I had for weeks has been the Denver Trail Runners Thursday night runs, once a week, and one Boulder Flatirons run.
So I knew I'd suck. I figured if I could finish under 4hrs, I could be satisfied, under the circumstances. Unfortunately I missed it by 4 minutes. So I'm not satisfied with my marathon finish.

The rest of the weekend, though, was incredibly enjoyable and relaxing. I enjoyed the ride out, the people, the weather, the scenery. I even enjoyed the snow storm on Vail Pass coming back so much I parked at the Pass and slept the night there to prolong the winter experience.









The final shot is Eisenhower Tunnel, at a red light, waiting for the hazardous fuel tanker on the right to drive through by itself. Winter is here, in the high country.